Throughout much of his political career, Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed a degree of disdain for Jewish voters in the United States. As the former president sees it, he took steps he considered pro-Israel, with the expectation that he’d receive an electoral reward, and when Jewish voters largely stuck with Democrats anyway, Trump deemed them ungrateful.
This attitude continues to produce ugly results. Last summer, for example, the Republican used his social media platform to share a missive that accused “liberal Jews” of voting to “destroy” America and Israel. This week, as NBC News reported, Trump went further, invoking a dual loyalty trope by claiming that Jewish voters who support Democrats hate Israel.
“Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” Trump said in an interview with Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official, on Gorka’s web show. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves, because Israel will be destroyed,” Trump continued, going on to discuss Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
The presumptive GOP nominee added that he believes Democrats “hate Israel.” He specifically targeted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — the highest ranking Jewish lawmaker in American history — as being “very anti-Israel,” which is hilarious to anyone who knows anything about Chuck Schumer.
His campaign spokesperson, showing the kind of measured restraint that’s come to define Team Trump, added, “The Democrat [sic] Party has turned into a full-blown anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist cabal.”
To put it mildly, Jewish Democrats in Congress were not impressed. An Axios report quoted Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, for example, saying, “Trump demonstrates daily his lack of fitness for the presidency by spreading dangerous stereotypes and embracing antisemites.” Rep. Kathy Manning of North Carolina added that the former president’s rhetoric is “particularly disgraceful and dangerous at a time when Jews are facing dangerous levels of antisemitism nationwide.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland issued an especially pointed response, noting, “Luckily I don’t know any Jews who look to Donald Trump for advice on how to be Jewish. After all, this is the guy who saw ‘very fine people on both sides’ of an antisemitic riot and entertained the neo-Nazi Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes over at his house at Mar-a-Lago for dinner.”
Part of the problem, of course, is Trump’s twisted perspective. The Republican’s sense of entitlement is so overwhelming that he believes he effectively completed a transaction with the assumption that Jewish voters would feel compelled to put aside their values and judgment, and support him in droves.
When that didn’t happen, Trump not only saw this as a betrayal, he concluded that he would be justified in lashing out at those who disappointed him in ugly ways.
Making matters worse is the familiarity of the circumstances.
During his 2016 campaign, for example, Trump spoke to the Republican Jewish Coalition and said, “You’re not gonna support me because I don’t want your money. You want to control your politicians.” He added, “I’m a negotiator — like you folks.”
Several months later, in the runup to Election Day, the Republican promoted antisemitic imagery through social media. In the closing days of the 2016 campaign, Trump again faced accusations of antisemitism, claiming Hillary Clinton met “in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers.”
While in office, the then-president used some highly provocative rhetoric about Jews and what he expected about their “loyalties.” Trump also spoke at the Israeli American Council’s national summit, where he suggested Jewish people are primarily focused on wealth, which is why he expected them to support his re-election campaign.
There was also, of course, his ugly reaction to a racist event in Charlottesville in 2017, in response to torch-wielding bigots chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”
After his defeat, Trump kept this going, whining that Jewish voters “don’t love Israel enough,” dining with prominent antisemites at Mar-a-Lago, and arguing that Jews need to “get their act together” and “appreciate” Israel “before it is too late.”
In late 2022, the former president went so far as to declare that Jewish leaders “should be ashamed of themselves” over their “lack of loyalty.” Around the same time, he added to the list, using related rhetoric about Jews with a documentary filmmaker.
Or put another way, Trump’s latest example of antisemitism was offensive, but it was not surprising.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
